ABSTRACT
To evaluate the effect of a psychiatric label attached to a normal person, on the attitude of final year medical students in Pakistan. Cross-sectional survey. This survey was conducted among final year medical students in Chandka Medical College Larkana, Pakistan in July 2009. Self administered questionnaire was used consisting of a demographic details, a single-paragraph vignette depicting a normal person and a modified social distance scale was used to elicit responses from final year medical students. The randomly selected students were divided in to two groups; group A received a case description with a psychiatric label attached while group B received the same case description without a label. Response rate was of more than 99%. Out of them 61.4% were males. More than half responded to the questionnaire with the attached psychiatric label and 48.8% responded to the questionnaire without label. Mean [SD] age of the participants was 23.76 [4.43]. Significant number of Students were, unwilling to do shopping from the market run by the person with label [p = 0.025], and to have him in his work place [p = 0.024] or share room with him [p = 0.023] as compared to the willing students. Also significant number of students thought that friendship with the psychiatric patient will adversely affect their mental health [p=0.03]. These results confirm that label does affect view of medical students towards individual the irrespective of his/her behavior